Formatting milliseconds to always 3 digits for d.getMilliseconds() call

Question

So I have this:

new Date().getMilliseconds();

however, on occasion this just yields just 1 or 2 digits, instead of 3.

So I tried using:

new Date().getMilliseconds().toFixed(3);

so that it always is 3 digits, but this seems to always yield 000, and I don't know why. Anyone know how to do this right?

Answer 1

You can use padStart to pad the string to the desired length:

setInterval(() => {
  const str = String(new Date().getMilliseconds()).padStart(3, '0');
  console.log(str);
}, 99);

This is a somewhat new feature though, so you'll need a polyfill if you want to support older browsers.